Terms of service

How engagements work, what is promised and what is not, and the conflict exclusion I hold myself to. Written to be read, not to be survived.

Last updated: 11 September 2026

1. Who these terms apply to

These terms cover consulting services provided by Jorge Horst, an independent SEO consultant based in Kraków, Poland, to business clients. Services are offered to business entities only, not to consumers. Every engagement is also governed by its own written proposal and contract; where the two differ, the signed contract wins.

2. Scope and proposals

Work begins from a written proposal setting out the situation, scope, deliverables, price, timeline and terms. Nothing outside that scope is assumed to be included. Changes are welcome and are handled as a written variation with their own price, rather than absorbed silently.

3. Fees and payment

  • Projects: 50 per cent on signature, 50 per cent on delivery.
  • Retainers: invoiced monthly in advance, three-month minimum, then rolling with 30 days' notice from either side.
  • Retainer hours roll over once and then expire. They are not a bank balance.
  • Payment terms: 14 days from invoice date.
  • Currency: EUR or USD for international clients, PLN for Polish ones. EU business invoices carry reverse-charge VAT wording where applicable.
  • Third-party costs — publication fees, tooling bought specifically for your project — are passed through at cost with the invoice attached, never marked up.
  • Late payment may pause work. You will always be told before that happens.

4. What you provide

Read access to Google Search Console, analytics and, where relevant, the CMS; one named contact who can make decisions; and replies within a reasonable time. Deadlines assume this. If access or answers are delayed, delivery dates move accordingly.

5. Conflict of interest — the employer exclusion

Stated plainly

I hold a full-time role as Senior SEO Specialist at ALK-Abelló. To keep that relationship beyond reproach, I do not accept consulting clients who are:

  • active in allergy immunotherapy;
  • competitors of ALK-Abelló; or
  • agencies or vendors currently serving ALK-Abelló.

All consulting is performed outside contracted working hours. Client data, tooling, subscriptions and accounts are kept entirely separate from my employer's, and no employer data appears in any client deliverable. If an engagement later turns out to fall inside this exclusion, I will end it and refund any unearned fees.

6. AI assistance

I use AI tooling in delivery — research, analysis at scale, prospecting, first drafts, and the automations described on the SEO automation page. This is disclosed rather than hidden, because you are entitled to know how the work is produced.

Every client-facing artefact passes human review before it reaches you. No deliverable is machine-generated and shipped unread, and I will not build a workflow that publishes to your site without a person approving it. For YMYL categories — health, finance, legal — that review step is not negotiable.

7. Methods: the white-hat commitment

Link acquisition uses earned editorial placements and digital PR only. I do not use, buy from or recommend private blog networks, link farms, link exchanges, comment or forum spam, or paid placements disguised as editorial. Where a publication charges a legitimate fee, it is disclosed to you and billed at cost.

For clients in regulated categories I work within YMYL expectations: medically reviewed content where it is required, credited authors, and no claim that cannot be sourced.

8. Ownership of deliverables

On full payment, everything produced for you is yours: audits, roadmaps, dashboards, briefs, prompt sets and automations. Automations are built inside your own accounts on your own API keys, with no licence and no per-seat fee. I retain the right to reuse my own underlying methods, templates and know-how — which existed before your project and will outlive it.

9. Confidentiality

Your data, documents and anything commercially sensitive stay confidential, during the engagement and after it. I will not name you publicly, use your logo or publish a case study without your written permission. A separate NDA is fine; send yours and I will sign it.

10. What is not promised

No ranking guarantees

Nobody controls Google, and anyone who guarantees a position is either misinformed or lying. I commit to the work — the analysis, the recommendations, the deliverables, the hours — not to a ranking, a traffic number or a revenue figure. Results depend on your market, your competitors, your implementation and algorithm changes nobody sees coming. Estimates given during an engagement are informed judgement, not undertakings.

11. Liability

My total liability for any engagement is limited to the fees you have paid for it. I am not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profit, lost traffic or lost revenue. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited under Polish law.

12. Ending an engagement

Retainers: 30 days' written notice from either side after the minimum term. Projects: if you cancel mid-project, work completed to that point is payable and everything produced so far is handed over. I may end an engagement if the work would require methods I do not use, if the conflict exclusion in section 5 turns out to apply, or if invoices go unpaid — with unearned fees refunded in the first two cases.

13. Governing law

These terms and any engagement are governed by Polish law. Disputes fall to the courts with jurisdiction over Kraków, Poland. I would much rather resolve anything by conversation first, and in practice that has always been enough.

14. Contact

Jorge Horst
Independent SEO consultant
Kraków, Poland — service-area business, no walk-in address
hi@jorgehorst.com

These terms describe how I work and are not a substitute for the signed contract governing your engagement. See also the privacy policy.